Removing pages from index

[AlexGop]

Hello,

I run an e-commerce website. I just realized that Google has "pagination" pages in the index which should not be there. In fact, I have no idea how they got there. For example, www.mydomain.com/category-name.asp?page=3434532
There are hundreds of these pages in the index. There are no links to these pages on the website, so I am assuming someone is trying to ruin my rankings by linking to the pages that do not exist.

The page content displays category information with no products. I realize that its a flaw in design, and I am working on fixing it (301 none existent pages). Meanwhile, I am not sure if I should request removal of these pages. If so, what is the best way to request bulk removal.

Also, should I 301, 404 or 410 these pages?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Alex

[GeorgeDavis]

**Edit: Please see alans answer

[RyanKent]

Alex,

I would highly recommend crawling your website and examining the crawl report. If Google is indexing these pages, then they got to them on your site at some point. I would proceed with the idea in mind this is a web design issue, not someone trying to ruin your rankings, as you suggested.

The crawl report will show the referrer page which can help troubleshoot the issue. When you have pages generated by a CMS or other software, there can easily be issues like the one you are experiencing. In my experience this is the most likely cause of your issue.

You mentioned there are 100s of these pages in the index. If you can determine a pattern they match, it is possible you can 301 all of them with a single rule, sending the user to your main category page or where ever you feel is best.

You can also set up a parameter specific instructions in Google WMT. I would avoid doing this until after you have reviewed your crawl report. From your Google WMT dashboard > Site Configuration > Settings > Parameter handling tab > find or add your parameter and adjust the setting as you deem fit.

[AlanBleiweiss]

For the record, that link that SSCDavis referenced includes Matt Cutts discussing faceted navigation, not pagination.  Faceted navigation is different than pagination by leaps and bounds. So he (SSCDavis), with all due respect, is absolutely incorrect in his claim of what Matt said.

Maile Ohye, Senior support engineer at Google, definitely recommends allowing pagination to be indexed, if implemented properly. She even discussed this at length this week up at SMX Advanced in Seattle.  Vanessa Fox, head of Nine by Blue, and former Googler (the creator of Google Webmaster Tools) agrees.

And so do I.

When performed properly, pagination (with quality optimization of paginated pages) can lead to dramatic increases in individual products indexed, higher quality visits from people further along in the buying process, and more people finding the site through an exponentially greater number of keyword phrases.

Consider this - in pagination (X number of products on the initial page, with X additional DIFFERENT products on page 2, and x additional still more and different products on page 3,etc. - by not wanting those pages indexed, you're communicating to Google - hey - we don't care about these other products enough to include them." Which means they get a false and negative understanding of how many products you have in your catalog.  And THAT drives the overall strength of your catalog down.

Now, if, on the other hand, you already show ALL of your products on a top level page that is linked from the main navigation, then sure, pagination should be killed.  But only if that's the case.

[AlexGop]

Hi Ryan,

I crawled the site, and did not find links to these pages, however it made me realize another HUGE issue. Since the paging is dynamically created, it has links to the "back" & "forward" no matter what page you are on. So, if page # 5000 is displayed, it will have links to page # 4999 and 5001. Although in my website I do not have links to pages that do not exist, all it takes is someone link to my site with "page=10000" and Google to index that page. From this point on, G will index all the PAGEs that do not exist.

Thanks again for getting me a step closer to resolving my problem.

However, the problem is still the INDEX. Google has (now realizing that its in the thousands) pages indexed with no content. These pages just contain links to other PAGING pages that have no content and my main menu/categories.

How do I get these pages removed from the index?

Thanks again!

Alex

[AlexGop]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for the info. I was going to set my page 2+ to "noindex,follow", however your reply makes sense. I will leave them indexable. I do see some competitors "rel=canonical" pagination to "view all" pages. I think I will keep my pages as is.

However, as my reply to Ryan stated, my issue is still the INDEX.

Google has thousands of "no content" pages indexed. They contain links to other "no content" pages making my site look thin. This may be the reason we lost so much ranking/traffic with Panda update.

How do I get these pages removed from the index? And do I return 301, 404 or 410 when Google comes back to reindex them?

Thanks for your help!

Alex

[GeorgeDavis]

Alan, I think I misspoke.  I meant to say that a categorically structured set of your products would be better to index than a paginated version.  For example :

http://www.sunglasses.com/mens/black/productx

as opposed to http://www.sunglasses.com/products?page=233

Is it still considered wise to index both paginated results along with categorized results in this case?

[AlanBleiweiss]

Ah - that's definitely better, if you don't go too wide.  2009 - 2010's concept of not having too many links went too far with too many people.  Sites became too flat.

Categories and pagination are best served with having enough categories to cover the highest level groups, with sub-categories as appropriate, but not to the the point where there's only a few products in any single sub-category.  So if you've got more than a dozen or fifteen products in a category or sub-category, pagination is perfectly valid.

Having more than six, eight or maybe ten categories at most, is also not good.

[AlanBleiweiss]

yes the no content page thing is a big problem.  If you have a "view all" option, and it's more than a dozen, fifteen or maybe 20 products, that should be paginated, with full indexing.  Maile Oyhe even talked about that specific scenario of "view all" being good.

In my experience, all of the no-content pages should, ideally, be 301 redirected in a way that they point to the most relevant highest level category page on your site.

Since there's so many, there's no easy way to get them removed from the index other than doing the 301 then being patient as Google recrawls then re-confirms.